David Johnston: Vaincourt’s war poem went viral

David Johnston, The Gazette11.12.2012

David Johnson is the Gazette's communities editor

A. Lawrence Vaincourt, show here in RCAF gear in England in 1945, wrote the poem Just a Common Soldier (A Soldier Died Today). Ann Landers discovered the poem in 1991 and reprinted parts of it, launching it to international fame. Vaincourt was living in Deux Montagnes when he wrote the poem in 1987, on deadline for the defunct Lachute Watchman newspaper. He died in 2009.Courtesy of Randy Vancourt

MONTREAL — John McCrae’s In Flanders Fields, written in 1915, is without question the best-known war poem in Canadian history. But the one that A. Lawrence Vaincourt banged out on deadline for the defunct Lachute Watchman weekly newspaper in 1987 has become an iconic poem in its own right.

While vast numbers of people, both here and around the world, are familiar with the poem, titled Just A Common Soldier (A Soldier Died Today), few are aware of its Quebec origins.

After syndicated U.S. advice columnist Ann Landers reprinted parts of Vaincourt’s poem in 1991, it went the pre-digital equivalent of viral throughout the English-speaking world. In 2005, the United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y, incorporated words from the poem into a marble monument. In 2009, the Royal British Legion sought and gained permission to use Just a Common Soldier as part of its annual poppy campaign. This year marks the poem’s 25th anniversary.

“Larry” Vaincourt grew up in the Châteauguay Valley and was living in Deux-Montagnes when he wrote Just A Common Soldier. His wife, Doreen, still lives in the home where the couple raised five sons, including Randy, who lives in Toronto today and handles reprinting requests for the poem.

Vaincourt only started working as a columnist for the Watchman in 1983, which was the year he turned 60 and sold the last of the photo studios he had long operated in Pointe-Claire and Deux-Montagnes. In 2004, he won the Quebec Community Newspaper Association award for best column, for his humorous account of the long underwear he had worn during the Second World War, when he had served in England as an airplane mechanic with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Vaincourt also wrote a novel, which he finished a month before he died in 2009, and has yet to be published.

His son Randy says he wrote Just a Common Soldier at a time when some of his friends at the local Legion in Deux-Montagnes had started to die: “His circle of friends had started to get smaller and smaller, and these were just ordinary soldiers like him, and he thought about how little the public knew about all these ordinary men and women who had served.”

Shortly after he had written the poem, he sent an item on a whim to Ann Landers titled the Tissue Issue, about the proper way to place a roll of toilet paper — with the paper rolling out over the top of the roll, or out from under the bottom? Landers never published the item, but it sparked an ongoing personal correspondence and friendship. In 1991, Vaincourt was about to publish Rhymes and Reflections, the first of three books of his columns and poems, when he asked Landers for an endorsement for the book jacket — and she said yes. Vaincourt sent her a copy of the book, and it was while reading it that she came across Just a Common Soldier.

And that’s how the poem went from local renown in the regions west of Montreal to being a global iconic tribute to common soldiers all over the world.

“I find that the American public has really adopted it,” Randy Vaincourt said. “Every Memorial Day, it is read on the radio. These days, I’m getting a lot of requests in connection with the death of Vietnam War vets, because they’re starting to pass on now. I’m also seeing a lot of interest in it in India now, and I’m not sure why. I think it’s probably because of email, and how easy it is to mail things around the world now.”

People who are familiar only with parts of Just A Common Soldier and try to find out more about it are always surprised to discover just how long the poem really is.

“John McCrae’s was the perfect length,” he said this week of the 97-word In Flanders Field. “But Dad never put any thought into the length of his — he always said he was just rushing to file it on time for his newspaper.”

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